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The Disposable Coffee Cup Problem

Ah, coffee. I’m eleven, I don’t drink it. And its lucky I don’t, because it is bad news for the environment – and here’s why…

The enemy!

A recent study on the effect of paper coffee cups showed that producing and transporting one cup led to the production of 110 grams of Carbon Dioxide. That’s twice the worry when we realise you cannot recycle these cups.

The resin based plastic lining in these “disposable” cups prevents us from recycling them, as this lining can actually exist longer than you! But how can we stop this?

There are so many ways we can help. Buying an in-home coffee machine is one of them. When you make a drink in your kitchen, you use your own cup. Now that (albeit expensive, but worth it) solution means so much. A third of all Australians own coffee machines, YAY THE REVOLUTION!

Another way is to buy a reusable cup (a.k.a. a KeepCup). I myself enjoy some hot chocolate to go and it is so easy, and eco-friendly. These genius cups can be used for over three years, and one website states:

“There is the same amount of plastic in 20 disposable cups as one small KeepCup”

Mind blown!!

The solution

If you think how much these actions would help the disposable cup situation, hen think of Craig Reucassel – he took major steps by filling an ENTIRE TRAM with disposable coffee cups on his ABC show War on Waste. We Aussies throw away a tram-full of paper cups every 30 seconds – and when a tram-full means 50,000 cups – that’s as bad as you can get.

My mother drinks coffee quite a bit – we travel a lot, and takeaway coffee is inevitable. But a drive-through coffee can turn into a good thing, at least when your reusable cup is in the car!